I've seen rust precisely twice in 28 years of central Florida rose growing -- once on a Floribunda I had recently bought (likely brought from somewhere with inoculum) and very strangely, once out in the wilds of a Florida swamp, on the native Rosa palustris! I've wondered if that might have been some variant of blackberry rust, rather than true rose rust, just considering what it was and where it was located. In any case, no, in the Southeast, we tend to be too consistently warm and humid for good rust development. Blackspot, on the other hand, LOVES us.

It's likely rather weird and somewhat horticulturally masochistic, but I always enjoy seeing rust when I travel to Mediterranean climates -- it's such a rare thing to see, that it's kind of a thrill. Sorry to you who suffer with it.
Malcolm

Ha! Come get your thrills! Abe Darby is like a rust bucket right now. Usually I don't see much rust in my personal garden; this is unusual where I live. I do see a fair amount of it in the cemetery, especially with the HPs.
Janelle

Zone 6 Ohio :)

I've only seen the type of rust that develops on hollyhocks.

I saw rust once on a clematis about 10 years ago, does that count?

I second that I only experience rust on my hollyhocks, not roses.

I wonder what weather/conditions would promote rust, particularly on roses?

I hope it doesn't affect Texas.....if it does, I'm moving to Florida :)

Audrey

Well, I keep wondering . . .

Say I've got a terrific Found probable HP here, and it rusts like nobody's business in my climate ...
But it has a GREAT bloom, and it doesn't mildew.

What would happen if it was grown in -- say -- Florida.
Or Ohio.
Or MS.

Jeri

Odds are an HP in Florida would have blackspot and no rust, but Baronne Prevost is heading toward her 2nd flush with gorgeous clean, bright green leaves. I'm ectatic. She's tall (3.5') and slender, planted last September.

Sherry

HPs are quite variable, here, in their disease susceptibility, but certainly, black spot and mildew are common on them. Baronne Prevost, interestingly, doesn't get much blackspot, but will absolutely cover up with anthracnose (looks just like black spot, but without the yellow halos). And anthracnose is far more difficult to control. We used to use Captan on it. Now, we don't grow BP.

Mildew is the disease of choice here: perhaps half of my roses get it at some point. Blackspot only on susceptible plants in wet cool weather. Practically no rust. A couple of years ago we had five straight weeks of rain in May-June and 'Zephirine Drouhin' got a bad case of rust and looked terrible the rest of the year. The next spring she was fine again and has been healthy since. I've seen it once or twice on other roses, not in my own garden as far as I can remember. So it's not a problem.
Melissa

Blackspot, and other similar looking fungal diseases, are a fact of life here. Mildew comes seasonally, spring and fall, but it has been more of a problem this year than I remember. The weather is weird this year, so I'm sure that's the reason.

Rust? Never on the roses. I have Cedar Apple Rust, though. It just seems that there's a fungus out there for every application.

Connie

No rust here either, a bit of bs and buckets of mildew if season is favorable for it.

Plenty of black spot here in Georgia, but no rust. Maybe there is an area that has neither. We should all move there.

Oh, was that rust on my Hollyhocks a few weeks ago? It looked ugly. But it's gone now.

I've seen rust in the east, though not in my garden.
At the big rose garden in Hershey PA, two falls Rust ran rampant through the entire garden. It happened while the roses were still in full bloom, but it was all over the garden and I worried for the people who gardened downwind because the leaves had both the red-orange spores and also the larger black spores in which the fungus overwinters. (Really neat under the microscope- they look like two black duncecaps glued together at their bases.)

Before those years, I had only seen rust in the east at the Burlington Botanical Garden in Ontario andthen it was on rugosas and a shrub or two. The Burlington visits were in June so I don't know about later in the year.

Hershey's growing conditions are not that dissimilar from my own, so I worry that rust can establish itself here, it just hasn't yet.

FWIW, in Tennessee there is a rust that appears on berries but when I've seen it near roses, the roses stayed clean. And there is the apple rust that is widespread.

I don't think I have rust here in coastal NC though sometimes I got worried about some spots that were unfamilar to me but I have never seen those spores on the underside of the leaves.

I've never seen rose rust in Asheville (2200-2500 ft. elevation). Once I saw a garden in Spruce Pine (2800 ft.) that was full of it one cool spring, but the elderly gardener had never seen it before. I'd say half the plants were badly affected--is that roughly the susceptibility rate for modern bush roses?

No rust here

The only thing rusty in my garden, at the moment, is Abe Darby. I do worry that with the current weather conditions, he'll spread the rust around. I look the other way, because of the beauty of his blooms, but he always has some rust. If the rust he has becomes a problem around the garden, out he goes. Rust is what the CA rose gardener has to watch out for. Blackspot has never been a problem for the area I live in. Now, mildew can be a problem, but I just get a touch of that in early spring.

Juliet

This is a really interesting thread. I had been feeling sorry for all the gardeners in the South because of the blackspot/defoliating problems - but since I've been volunteering at the Sac Cemetery garden, I've seen rust galore and just hate it. It's like Janelle says, the HPs seem to be covered with it. I told someone, day before yesterday, that I wouldn't have a Hybrid Perpetual as a gift! (That's forgotten when I see them in bloom, though.)

Laura

rust, BS, mildew - we get them all - but not everything on every rose. ZD - mildew, Graham Thomas, BS, Madame Gregoire S - rust, suzy (me) - vallium

I think I'd trade my thrips for your rust.

Laura, that's why I don't grow many HPs. I DETEST rust, and I will not spray.

That's why I so love "Old Town Novato" ("Jay's Hudson Crimson") because it doesn't rust, and rarely shows more than a passing touch of mildew, and produces blooms of surpassing beauty.

Jeri

Jeri, I think you should send the rose to me...I'll tell you how it does ;)

Eric

Jeri, I am happy to report that I do still have rust on my hollyhocks. It doesn't seem to be bothering them. I took a picture, but it's very blurry :( Do you think this will spread to my roses? I do spray the roses, so maybe that will prevent them from getting it.

{{gwi:271389}}

I'm not sure if it's possible or not, but I've never seen rust on a rose in Minnesota. Hollyhocks can get it.

Buford, a rule of thumb: don't worry about fungus diseases spreading from other plants to roses.

I've never had rust till this yr. Not sure why but Mary Rose is covered. Oddest thing.

God is cfair. S/he made sure we each had a version of hell.

Catsrose, that's too funny, good thing I wasn't sipping a beverage or it would have come out my nose!!!

I dunno, Jeri, after hearing so much now about black spot, I think that we are lucky with mildew & rust. We at least have many more varieties to select from, yeah?

"Say I've got a terrific Found probable HP here, and it rusts like nobody's business in my climate ...
But it has a GREAT bloom, and it doesn't mildew."

I'm not sure whether anyone could know the answer to the climate angle. There is somewhere that ANY given rose will do badly, if only because of variations in BS strains, nematode populations, etc. But some roses won't do well almost anywhere.

I live a few minutes away from the (unsprayed) San Jose Heritage Rose Garden, and am always marvelling at how some HPs fight off almost everything, while a few are already completely defoliated in May, and most are looking pretty unhealthy. BS, rust, mildew, they've got them all.

My guess is that some of the Damask Perpetual-Portland-HP types, like Rose de Rescht, Autumn Damask, and Comte de Chambord, probably do very well in your area, as they do here.

If you've ever considered trying your hand at hybridizing, maybe you could cross it with something more robust, and save what is great about that rose for future generations. If you like it enough for it to seem worth the bother, anyway.

Gardening in Dallas and in north Alabama I never saw any rust. I'm still waiting to see what crops up here. Besides slugs, that is. ugh.

I have 2 Hybrid Perpetuals, Reine des Violettes and Gloire de Ducher, which have grown and bloomed vigorously for their whole lives with only a touch of rust that never seemed to bother them. But I had a Eugene de Beauharnais which, as you said in another post, jerijen, was doomed by the unstoppable, never-ending rust. Since we're both in the same zone, maybe I'll give up on trying again with that one.

a Eugene de Beauharnais which, as you said in another post, jerijen, was doomed by the unstoppable, never-ending rust.

*** Sad, ain't it?
That's one of the MOST beautiful blooms imaginable, on a plant which MUST be sprayed like all getout, in our area.
A heart-breaker. :-(

Jeri

"Are there areas where rust is not a problem?" Jeri

I wish I lived there ... SIGH. Having a really bad rust attack the last 2 weeks (sprayed too late with myclobutanile this year) ... Documenting it with photos - how it develops - and how spraying helps - Causing yellowing/ and leaf drop - much earlier than if just let the infection run it course.

Next year I will spray the usual suspects to prevent it taking this good of a hold - it is so much work removing the yellowing leaves - but they let go easy at the stipules from the canes. The attack is beginning to clear up now - have removed the orange spotted leaves/and the last yellowing will drop themselves - here 2 weeks before the great summer flush begins - most roses look great - but some have lost almost 30 percent of their leaves ... I spray My Holly Hocks too - love my black and burgundy holly hocks. At least spraying these helps - which is more than I can say about some roses - Roses that keep getting it even when spraying gets the showel here - I chop them up to make sure they are dead and that some poor old lady down the road does no take them from the common compost pile ... she does that all the time - even though I explained that I only throw out roseplants that simply perform too poorly. But she seems to see it as her mission in life to "rescue" plants and especially roses from the huge compost pile. So I chop up these rose plants - in order not to have to have to see the poor ghastly roses like "Rouge Royale" - 8 plants gave 1 nice bloom 3 years ... and was the Garden RUST hostess - a royal pain in the ... My Wonderfully fragrant Frederic Mistrals got the showel too this year ... I simply can not accept rose plants looking like that! And that spraying them even does not help.